


Good to be Back

by the_most_beautiful_broom



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Assassins & Hitmen, F/M, Modern Era, Partners in Crime, Sharing a Bed, i mean it's not not a john wick au, with a bit of operation anthropoid sprinkled in because i just read HHhH again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-30
Updated: 2020-03-30
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:54:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23385550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_most_beautiful_broom/pseuds/the_most_beautiful_broom
Summary: Murphy has been out of the wet work game for years now, but when someone from the past shows up at his bar, he doesn't think twice before diving back in.
Relationships: Emori/John Murphy (The 100)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 19
Collections: Chopped Madness





	Good to be Back

**Author's Note:**

> Round two of Chopped madness! It does feel ‘mad’ to be here right now, and I’m very nervous, so make sure to vote! This round had a character focus of John Murphy, a dystopian theme, and two tropes: partners in crime and bed sharing.

**_[ Resistance Transmitter, Morse code ]  
_ ** _Hailing Arkadia, over._

**_[ Arkadia Transmitter ]  
_ ** _This is an inactive frequency; who is this? Over._

**_[ Resistance Transmitter ]  
_ ** _The Resistance. Over._

**_[ Arkadia Transmitter ]  
_ ** _You’re too late, Abby Griffin is dead. Over._

**_[ Resistance Transmitter ]  
_ ** _Our condolences. The mountain men have progressed too far. A message must be sent. Over._

**_[ Arkadia Transmitter ]  
_ ** _A message has been sent; we lost. Over._

**_[ Resistance Transmitter ]  
_ ** _Then it’s time to send a new signal. We will have actors in place. Over._

**_[ Arkadia Transmitter ]  
_ ** _Negative. The best we can do right now is wait this out. Over._

**_[ Resistance Transmitter ]  
_ ** _If we take out Cage, his father will understand there is a resistance. The Arkadian people are not a conquest. Over._

**_[ Arkadia Transmitter ]  
_ ** _Please call off the attack. An attempt against Cage’s life will be of no use to Arkadia. Its consequences for our people will be immeasurable. Over._

**_[ Arkadia Transmitter ]  
_ ** _Repeat, call off the attack. Do you copy? Over._

**_[ Arkadia Transmitter ]  
_ ** _Hello?_

\--

The rest of the country was in flames, but The Dropship was doing just fine. Every acre of mineable land had been turned over to the Mountain Men—a shit name, Murphy had decided, for a group that was willing to commit genocide at the drop of a hat—who were culling the earth. Smog was no longer a thing of coastal cities, but a haze that stretched over America. 

Turns out, a bloody coup, martial law, and a tanked economy left people with little else to do but drown themselves in questionably-attained whiskey.

Once, The Dropship had been a place for current and ex cons, people Murphy had run with when he was still in the game. Then, everything went to hell and Murphy had bought out the ramen place next door to make room for the amount of business banging down his doors. 

Sometimes he missed sunlight, but most of the time he was too busy breaking up fights and making sure no one was passing him counterfeit coin. 

Funny, how quick they went back to drachmas. 

The Mountain Men had made bonfires of the old dollar, and a couple hackers had proved that crypto currency was too easy to fake, so society had plummeted back a millennia or two, and gold was the currency of choice.

The Dropship didn’t take gold—the stuff was heavy and you couldn’t move quick with it; Murphy might be distant from his old life, but not that distant.

A pint of saltwater bought a man drinks for the night, which Murphy would dump onto the plastic tarps in his basement, under the UV lights, come back before opening to rake up the granules. He sold cubes the size of his thumbnail to the Mountain Men at an incredible profit, enough to keep his doors open and keep Arkadia inebriated, just how he liked it. 

It also helped that water rights were just about all native Arkadians had, they all tapped into the saltwater wells in their basement on principle, and Murphy liked that the Mountain Men were paying for something that cost the people nothing. 

It was nearly 3am, just regulars, now, so he noticed when she walked in. 

Emori.

All the good players had a moniker, but the best were infamous by their given name. He hadn’t seen her in years, not since they’d both been given a contract on the same senator. 

She saw him at once, picked him out in the crowded bar and raised an eyebrow. Murphy didn’t hesitate, flagged down a waiter to watch the bar and cocked his head towards a curtain at the back of the bar. She crossed the crowd quickly, ducking behind the curtain, and Murphy waited a minute or two before following. 

He didn’t do much business back here, not anymore. 

She was at the bar cart in the corner, pouring something amber into two norlan glasses. He crossed the room and she turned just at the right time, pressing the glasses into his hand. 

“John,” she said.

“Emori,” he said, tapping his glass to hers and downing it. Neither of them broke eye contact, one of the oldest rules. 

“Are you here to kill me?” he asked, after they’d both finished. 

She laughed, a deep, soft sound, and he knew what it meant. If she’d meant to kill him, he’d be dead. But then again, if she’d tried, maybe she would dead. 

He hadn't been gone _that_ long. 

“I’m not. I’m here with a job offer.”

Murphy figured he should’ve seen that coming. “Who’re you working for these days?”

“Whoever can afford me, and lets me play by my rules.”

Everyone had rules, anyone in wet work. For some people it was no kids, for some people it was nothing religious, for others it was never in a crowd. For Emori, it was exclusivity, or it had been, a decade ago.

“And who’s that this time?”

“The Resistance,” she said, casually, but she was watching him. 

Murphy nodded; that tracked. There was always money to be made at war, and just because it happened behind the scenes didn’t make it any less profitable.

“So what do you need me for?” he asked, holding his glass out. 

Emori brought the decanter over, poured another shot. “It’s on Cage Wallace.”

Murphy was glad she was still pouring; he would’ve choked if he’d been drinking. “The son of the man that hazed America?”

“Do you know another?”

Damn. 

He’d known it would have to be a big mark, for her to offer it to him, but he didn’t expect that big. 

“At least it’s not Dante,” he mused aloud, and Emori capped the decanter, shrugging. 

“They considered that,” she said casually, but didn’t further elaborate. 

Murphy took another sip. “Okay. So why do you need me?”

“I don’t,” Emori said calmly. “No offense. I just get the feeling they’ll go behind me and offer the contract to someone else.”

“So you want backup?”

“I want insurance. If you’re with me, you’ll watch my back, or at least be a second pair of eyes to see who else they send after him.”

It was almost a compliment.

Murphy tilted his glass around, watching the liquid creep closer to the rim as he circled it. “Why now?”

Emori was quiet for a moment. 

“Abby Griffin is dead.”

Murphy stopped swirling the glass. “I thought it was just the flu.”

Emori shook her head, and her eyes were careful as they watched him. “You think the leading surgeon in the country wasn’t properly vaccinated?”

Shit.

He wasn’t close with Abby, not anymore. She’d paid his bail a lifetime ago, when he was still a kid, when her daughter had talked him into poor life choices. She hadn’t needed to, could’ve just sprung her Princess, but she’d bailed him out too. The woman had a stifling sense of justice, and it had served her well—as surgeon, national figurehead, and mayor of Arkadia. She’d been the last beacon of decency in this mess of a regime, and now she was dead.

“What, was she poisoned or something?”

“Or something,” Emori said carefully. “The news will break to the public in the morning. Cage Wallace will be sworn in around noon, as acting Mayor of Arkadia.”

The greatest city in the world, being turned over to Cage Wallace.

Murphy downed the rest of the drink. “Then I guess we’d better get going.” 

\-- 

It was simple, always had been. 

There were smart people and there were dead people, then there were the people who were neither and both at once, like Emori and Murphy. 

In the corner of Murphy’s salt flat basement was a thin layer of concrete that Emori helped him take a sledgehammer to; the ground gave way and all the standard tools were there. The guns, the gloves, the pills. Murphy strapped a knife to his ankle and a gun to his belt, then carefully pulled out a leather jacket. He pulled it on, the leather settling on his shoulders with a familiar weight. There was a silver boat emblem on the lapel, an ark, a symbol of the company who wove kevlar into leather. 

Emori looked approving, then frowned. “Is that a fanny pack?”

It was, and it was filled with salt and magazines; Murphy clicked it around his waist. The trick was to never look like you were carrying, and he knew he didn’t. Emori looked clean too, but he’d be willing to guess she had twice his arsenal hidden somewhere. 

They left the basement, and then the Dropship, heady music pounding as they stepped onto the street in the early morning. 

\-- 

Emori had a motorcycle, of course she did, and she tossed him a helmet as she revved it up. He slid behind her, and his feet had barely left the ground before she was off. 

Arkadia was something at night.

The bright lights of downtown, the tops of skyscrapers hidden by the smog, eerie silence stretching. There were curfews, of course, but they weren’t really enforced after midnight. Just to keep the laypeople at home, even the Mountain Men knew they couldn’t fight against the kind of people that did business in the early morning.

Murphy hoped that fear held. 

Emori guided her bike to the side of the street, she dismounted and Murphy followed. He looked around and hid a smile; they were parked in the dead spot of two street cameras. In front of them was a nice car, suitcases in the back and Texas license plates. 

Emori got in the passenger seat, shaking out her hair, indicating for Murphy to get in the driver’s seat. On Emori’s seat were two envelopes, and she handed him one. Inside was a wallet, leather, with the ark logo, a couple credit cards and a driver’s license. 

“Daniel and Kaylee Lee,” Emori said, stuffing the contents of her envelope into her jacket pockets.

“Married?” Murphy asked, staring at his face on the license.

“It’s either that or siblings,” she said, and when he looked over, she was holding out a gold band. “Ready?”

“Sure,” Murphy mumbled, taking the ring and trying not to think about it. “So you knew I’d say yes?”

She shrugged. “If you’d said no, I would’ve still billed you for the paperwork.”

He didn’t think that was true, but he slipped the ring on his finger and pulled the car out of the parking space. The metal was cold against his hand; it’d been a while since he’d done this, even longer with a partner. Emori had a matching band, just gold, no diamond, and they drove down the block until Emori tilted her head. It was an ornate hotel, the kind with marble and chandeliers a ton of security, which made sense. Three valets with stances like ex-service men were waiting and there were cameras over the door, over the driveway, and he could count at least four in the lobby. 

“Alright, Mrs. Lee,” he muttered, and she grinned. 

\--

An electric razor fell into Cage Wallace’s bath while he was reading the latest NYT bestseller; the local cops would write it up as an untimely tragedy. The Mountain Men would, of course, be the ones to run the autopsy, and someone would find an injection point under Cage’s fingernail; the man was dead before they ran the water in the tub. 

It was easy, as it always was. 

Find target, execute contract, cover tracks, retreat.

Murphy left the tub running while Emori wiped the video feed in the hallway. If hotel standards hadn’t changed, the water would seep through the floor and the room below would report a leak in a couple hours. 

Back in their room, they moved quickly, unpacking the suitcases. It had to look like Mr and Mrs Lee had hastily unpacked and fallen fast asleep, in the middle of their roadtrip. Murphy set up their toiletries in the bathroom while Emori hid the syringe in a tampon wrapper in the bottom of her purse. 

Dawn was creeping through the smog through the windows by the time they were finished. Murphy dragged himself over to the couch, adrenaline fading fast and Emori looked at him oddly.

“Once they find out about Cage, they’re going to search the floor, then the five floors around, which gets them to us. We have to share the bed, John.”

Nobody called him John, his name sounded funny on the air, hanging like that between them. But she was right, so he crawled over to the bed and slipped under the sheets, nicer than anything he’d slept on in years, and ignored the warmth coming from the other side of the bed, the emptiness of the space between them, and the gold on his left hand.

\--

Murphy had never been one to wake up gently, never understood how people could be disoriented when they woke, not immediately know where and when it was. As long as he could remember, he’d woken suddenly and effectively. 

This time was different; this time he wasn’t alone. 

There was dark hair over his face, it smelled like eucalyptus and Murphy didn’t know he knew what eucalyptus smelled like. His feet were cold, and he realized it was because the comforter wasn’t covering them. It was pulled, wrapped around Emori, who was no longer across the bed, but had turned, and turned again, and was curled up against him.

He looked down, blinking slowly, surprised.

She was scrunched up, careful, her knees against his chest, her arms folded in front of her chest and her hands under her head, which was on his pillow. She was facing into him, her lashes long and fluttering slightly as she dreamed. One of her feet was twitching, but other than that she didn’t move. 

Hazy light was streaming through the windows and Murphy watched, amazed, as particles of light danced through her hair, glowing. In her sleep, Emori’s expression was relaxed, unguarded. He watched her for a moment, barely breathing, just noticing. There were things he didn’t get to do when the world ended, things like lying in a bed with something reminiscent of sun filtering through the windows, and notice freckles on the face of a beautiful woman. Getting a cramp from trying not to move, hoping she wouldn’t wake up, anything to stretch the moment a little longer. 

Murphy’s eyes felt heavy and he let himself fall back asleep; this was the closest he’d felt to peace in as long as he could remember. 

\-- 

**_[ Arkadia Transmitter, Morse code ]  
_ ** _What did you do? Over._

**_[ Resistance Transmitter ]  
_ ** _What had to be done. Over._

**_[ Arkadia Transmitter ]  
_ ** _Dante has sent a battalion to Arkadia. Any blood spilled in the next 24 hours isn’t on Dante’s hands, but on the Resistance. Over._

\-- 

In the end, the police didn’t go floor to floor for suspects. The Mountain Men didn’t search the hotel, they didn’t even review the video tapes. Instead, they were air dropped into the downtown of Arkadia with flamethrowers and teargas, nothing to kill, only destroy. 

Arkadia burned.

Small businesses, people would later notice, none of the national corporations, or any of the chains the Wallace family held investments with. Banks were fine too, mostly, but every bodega, every diner, coffee shop and specialty store, was broken into. The streets looked crystal, the way they were strewn with glass. 

In the evening, Dante Wallace made a press announcement, face grim. 

“Sometime last night,” he said, voice calm and eyes cold, “someone broke into the hotel room where my son was sleeping. Murdered him. And they thought they could get away with it, these zealots. Arkadia, I hope you understand now—civil disobedience will not be tolerated. I did not enjoy ordering the cleansing of downtown today. I did not enjoy the culling of the streets that make this a prosperous economy. But I hope we can learn from this. There must now be a codependency, a partnership. I no longer have my son, and you no longer have your livelihoods. Now, will you trust me? Will you not join me, as I bring Arkadia into her new future?”

Emori turned off the TV, face set, movements steady. 

She rifled through her purse, pulled out a burner phone and called it. Her eyes flared but her expression remained calm as the dial tone faded to a buzz as no one answered. 

“They’re washing their hands of us, it seems,” she said, voice flat.

Murphy nodded, looking at the hazy twilight out the window. He didn’t feel guilty about Cage; the man was garbage. And he knew the fallout wasn’t on him, or Emori, but he also knew the Resistance wasn’t going to take blame either.

He’d forgotten how much he hated being a pawn. 

Emori sat down at the foot of the bed, tapping the phone agitatedly against her palm. 

“Two options,” she said, quietly. 

“I like options,” Murphy said. 

Emori almost smiled, looking up at him briefly, before back at the phone in her hand. “One, we run.”

Now that was a plan. Just vanish, leave Arkadia and her smashed windows and burning streets, let the Dropship become a hovel for whoever needed; some lucky bastard would find the salt mines and be set for a lifetime, maybe two. 

“Option two?” Murphy asked.

Emori turned the phone in her hand, fingers sliding down the edges as it somersaulted. “We find the Griffin princess. Bring her out of hiding, wherever she ran off to, drag her back to Arkadia. Beat Wallace’s goons underground, sit her in her mother’s office, feed her a line or two about hope in the midst of darkness. Get the people to love her, keep her alive long enough to get a following.”

“Chase Dante out of Arkadia,” Murphy finished, mind speeding after her.

Emori looked up, nodding.

They looked at each other for a long moment. They weren’t to blame for this, this was what happened when powerful people got political--little people got hurt. 

“We’re not getting paid for this,” Emori said, like it wasn’t obvious. 

Murphy shrugged, looking out the window again. “Don’t think anyone’s getting paid for a while.”

“Both the Mountain Men and the Resistance are gonna be after us, once they figure out what we’re doing.”

“Good,” Murphy rolled his neck. “I’ve had a day.”

Emori looked at him, her deep eyes curious. “Who’d of thought it’d be two hitmen, off to save Arkadia, huh?”

Murphy huffed. He crossed the room to the coat rack, shrugged into his jacket, and tossed Emori hers. They got ready quickly, familiar sounds echoing around the room. Cartridges loading, barrels checked, knives sharpened. 

“Feels good to be back, doesn’t it?”

Murphy looked up and Emori was watching him. Her hands were busy, blurring over weapons, tying her hair into a braid.

“It does,” he agreed, thinking how much easier it was than he’d expected. Maybe that was because of who he was, maybe it was just shedding the business owner skin, and coming back to a more elemental part of himself. Or maybe it had to do with the woman who’d asked him to, whose ring he didn’t mind wearing, for whom he was ready to go to war. 

**Author's Note:**

> can you tell i saw john wick (1 and 2, watching 3 on monday) for the first time this weekend?


End file.
